lördag 16 maj 2020

Långsam lördag med Gutenberg

vilket inte alls är det samma som långtråkig! Snarare tvärtom.

Visst är den söt "rose-breasted grosbeak"
som kallas brokig kardinal på svenska?

Never before this summer (1870) have the king-birds, handsomest of flycatchers, built in my orchard; though I always know where to find them within half a mile. The rose-breasted grosbeak has been a familiar bird in Brookline (three miles away), yet I never saw one here till last July, when I found a female busy among my raspberries and surprisingly bold. I hope she was prospecting with a view to settlement in our garden. She seemed, on the whole, to think well of my fruit, and I would gladly plant another bed if it would help to win over so delightful a neighbor.

Ett av dagens fynd är "My Garden Acquaintance", av James Russell Lowell, en man jag inte känner särskilt väl. 
Det här är en kort, mycket kort, bok som jag trodde jag skulle ta mig igenom snabbt. Men det visar sig att det inte är läsning för den otålige, eftersom jag inte vet mycket om fåglar — i synnerhet inte de amerikanska, så får jag göra täta utflyter på nätet för att ta reda på vad James talar om. 
Många översättare har lyckats blanda ihop den amerikanska
trastfågeln "robin", med den europeiska rödhaken.

The robin has a bad reputation among people who do not value themselves less for being fond of cherries. There is, I admit, a spice of vulgarity in him, and his song is rather of the Bloomfield sort, too largely ballasted with prose. His ethics are of the Poor Richard school, and the main chance which calls forth all his energy is altogether of the belly. He never has these fine intervals of lunacy into which his cousins, the catbird and the mavis, are apt to fall. But for a' that and twice as muckle 's a' that, I would not exchange him for all the cherries that ever came out of Asia Minor. With whatever faults, he has not wholly forfeited that superiority which belongs to the children of nature. He has a finer taste in fruit than could be distilled from many successive committees of the Horticultural Society, and he eats with a relishing gulp not inferior to Dr. Johnson's. He feels and freely exercises his right of eminent domain. His is the earliest mess of green peas; his all the mulberries I had fancied mine.
  Skrikuv är väl inte det vackraste namn jag hört på en fågel, men vacker är den, och enligt James så låter den mycket bättre än sitt namn.

The screech-owl, whose cry, despite his ill name, is one of the sweetest sounds in nature, softens his voice in the same way with the most beguiling mockery of distance. J.R.L.
 For his cousin, the catbird, I have a still warmer regard. Always a good singer, he sometimes nearly equals the brown thrush, and has the merit of keeping up his music later in the evening than any bird of my familiar acquaintance.

Förutom att jag lärt mig en del om fåglar så har jag fått veta vem  Gilbert White var och att Cloaca Maxima byggdes si så där 600 år före vår tideräknings början!

Inga kommentarer:

Skicka en kommentar